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missingnominer · 19 days ago

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"There is no audience": A skeptic's essay on Player Theory

In this era of the Deltarune fandom, it often feels impossible to find individuals who don’t believe in some variation of Player Theory, the concept that Kris is controlled by a diegetic player. It has spread throughout the fandom to the point that many take it for granted and confuse it with canon, so convinced that it is an absolute, immutable fact as opposed to an unconfirmed fantheory that expressing any skepticism is frequently met with astonishment,or even outright hostility(Which in the case of bad-faith actors, can and does go as far the use of ableist slurs against skeptics. But the issue of ableism within the UTDR fandom is not the topic of this essay). However, this nigh-ubiquitousness does not make it true, merely popular. With the release of Chapters 3 and 4 nearly upon us, it is an ideal time to consider the possibility that popular fan theories could be wrong, and that is the purpose of this essay, to give a skeptic’s perspective on the matter. All that I ask is that you go into this essay, and when the time comes, the rest of Deltarune, with an open mind, willing to reevaluate the merits of Player Theory.

Before we begin discussing the merits, or lack thereof, of Player Theory, it is important to define exactly what it entails. There are many variations of it, but the two consistent elements at the base of every variation are that the player exists as a diegetic, in-universe entity, and that our control over Kris is fully diegetic. This is almost invariably presented as an inherently bad thing for Kris. That is the core of Player Theory, the foundation upon which all variations and additions are built, however it is worth going over some common additions. I will bring up those I intend to specifically address as they become relevant, however bear in mind that they all rely on those two core points and if either is false then the entire theory fails. One final note before we jump into the actual analysis: Under no circumstances should you forget that the burden of proof lies on Player Theorists, not skeptics. Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence, and Player theory is absolutely an extraordinary claim, this kind of relationship between the protagonist of a work of fiction and the person consuming that work of fiction is very, very far from the norm and something that defies even the precedent set by Undertale. The goal of this essay is not to prove that Player Theory is completely impossible, which is functionally impossible, as it is immensely difficult to prove a negative, merely to demonstrate that the evidence does not support it as of chapter 2.

Now, as previously stated, at the core of Player Theory are two simple premises: That the player diegetically exists, and that the player’s control over Kris is fully diegetic. Debunking these is actually quite simple! Let us ask ourselves a few simple yes-or-no questions: First, does the start of Kris’ “unusual behavior” line up with the start of the game? After all, if comments on Kris behaving differently than normal are meant to refer to us, then they should refer exclusively to the events of chapters 1 and 2, as we know we could not have diegetically controlled Kris prior to the start of the game. The answer is no, it does not line up. Every comment on Kris behaving oddly either applies to before Deltarune, or has a better explanation than being a reference to the Player. For instance, Kris’ refusal to play piano like they usually do and irritation with Susie’s comment on them simply pressing a key, often misrepresented as some kind of silver bullet, especially prior to the Spamton Sweepstakes, was recontextualized by the kris_dreemurr_kris page as simply being a matter of Kris not being comfortable being watched while they play(which, like. I relate hard to this. Hence why I’ve been saying that that was what the piano dialogue was actually getting at long before the Sweepstakes confirmed it). Kris will stop playing immediately if they realize someone is watching, so why would they start playing when they know Susie and/or the Big Mouth NPC are watching? Similarly, Kris’ unusually sociable behavior can’t be about the player, because aside from being partly explained by them having had a pretty great day, which can leave even the most introverted of people with more charge in their social batteries, and Noelle confirms in the post-weird route flashback scene that this also predates the events of the game(More on that when we get around to discussing the weird route.). Next, are there moments where Kris acts outside of player control(which, for obvious reasons, cannot be us diegetically controlling them)? Absolutely, they move on their own in essentially every single cutscene, occasionally talk without player input(though of course, thanks to Kris suffering from a severe case of silent protagonism, we only see characters responding to this, such as Toriel commenting on what Kris says over the phone or Susie lying about drinking their shampoo when questioned about it), and we are incapable of influencing their body language or tone of voice in any way. When we are offered a choice, they very frequently put a distinctly Kris-y spin on it either through the options themselves or by using their tone of voice and body language to subvert our expectations of the options. A prime example being their response to Noelle when she asks if she needs to get them a dog treat to get them to stay on the switch: either Kris outright howls their no, hence the drawn-out “o” in the dialogue option, or they say it so earnestly that Noelle is caught off guard, when one would expect either sarcasm or Kris’ usual stoic monotone. Your choice doesn’t matter, either way Kris gets to be silly and mess with Noelle. Another example is Susie’s question about who Kris would take to the festival: The options are for Kris to either give their honest answer, hesitantly pick from the options Susie gave, or refuse to play along entirely by remaining quiet, all of which are entirely in-character for Kris. And really, “Only Kris would say “Unknown”, not “I don’t know” …then keep standing there like that.” speaks for itself. I could spend hours analysing various choices we are given and how they show off Kris’ personality, but sadly, that is not the topic of this essay and this is enough of a tangent as is. The point is, when we are offered a choice, it will always be in-character for Kris. If Player Theory is true, then there’s a very strong case to be made that Kris themself is the one providing these choices and either way the actual execution is entirely up to them. So yeah, Kris is absolutely capable of acting outside of player control.

With that in mind: If Kris is being diegetically controlled, there are diegetic rules to that control, including when they are able to act outside of that control. So can we determine any of those rules? …Not really. Again, they act on their own in every cutscene, being able to move without player input and functionally having total freedom of speech even disregarding cases where they speak without input, there’s no clear diegetic trigger to them being able to act on their own. Throwing another wrench into this is the fact that we gain control over other party members in battle. Do we also diegetically control them? If so, why does Susie not show any signs of this? It’s already a stretch that Kris never comments on this, but Susie isn’t a silent protagonist and has absolutely no reason not to question what keeps happening during battle. Finally, are there any interesting conflicts that arise from Player Theory? Once again, not really. We only really control where Kris walks outside of cutscenes and combat orders and they seem unbothered and do not seek help with this, for there to be any real conflict between Kris and the player, the player’s control over Kris must be greatly emphasized by assigning actions to us which we rationally know we did not do, to explain both why this is a problem for Kris and why they don’t seek help with it. Player Theory, in its current form, inherently demands destroying Deltarune’s ludonarrative harmony, something uniquely important to any game where the player’s control over the protagonist is diegetic for incredibly obvious reasons, in order to be a source of conflict in the regular narrative. If our control over Kris is diegetic, but things they did without direct input from us are credited to us, that is a one-way ticket to ludonarrative dissonance town, the narrative is telling us that we did something that does not reflect the actual gameplay. As is, it’s really weak and overly on-the-nose as a metanarrative. Could this be salvaged? Sure, hypothetically, but it’s more likely that it was never the intent to begin with, that the game’s narrative conflict has nothing to do with its metanarrative, as is the case with Undertale and most other games that possess a metanarrative running in the background of their regular narrative. Player Theory, as it stands based on evidence from the first two chapters, is fundamentally flawed, its core premises fall flat due to not lining up with the game’s established timeline and our supposed control over Kris is inconsistent, lacking in any apparent rules, and it’s essentially impossible to create an interesting narrative conflict with it without causing big-time, immersion-destroying ludonarrative dissonance. And because its core premises fall flat, so too does the Theory as a whole. It really is that simple.

With the core of the theory now picked apart, let us move on to discussing some prominent elephants in the room. We will start with Spamton, the centre of numerous misconceptions that have contributed to the spread of Player Theory. First of all: No, Kris’ distress at the end of the fight has nothing to do with them supposedly relating to Spamton’s puppet motif. While Spamton does project heavily onto them(and not merely his puppet motif, he projects way more than just that), he extends this projection onto the entire party at the end of his fight, explicitly describing all three of them as having strings they are potentially strong enough to break. This brand of projection is a recurring thing, as Jevil does the same with his insistence that he’s the free one and everyone else is imprisoned, and even without that context, it’s a pretty obvious manipulation tactic that perfectly suits Spamton’s status as a typical sketchy salesman. That Spamton projects onto Kris doesn’t mean his projection is correct, any more than Jevil’s projection is correct. Kris doesn’t live in a garbage can anymore than they’re in prison. The puppet projection has nothing to do with Kris themself, it’s just part of the Freedom theme the secret bosses have going. So why are they distressed after the fight? Simple: they were duped, manipulated into trusting Spamton and viewing him as a friend, only to be backstabbed(seemingly on a whim, no less. Spamton clearly was not expecting the NEO body to be insufficient to achieve his goals, so it’s unlikely he was planning to take Kris’ SOUL even as a backup plan.), which is already cause for distress, but Spamton NEO is himself very off-putting, to the point that even Susie admits unprompted to being creeped out, even Susie feels the need to initiate a conversation about how disturbing that whole ordeal was. As Susie demonstrates, either one of these two factors would already be plenty of explanation for a teenager who already has a lot of weight on their shoulders to be distressed, both together and it’s surprising Kris isn’t having a total breakdown. And no, the yes/no dialogue choice is not indicative of player control either, once again both options are entirely in-character for them, either badly lying and saying they’re okay because they don’t want their friends to be worried about them(as Ralsei explicitly points out), or yelling the truth. Both of these are completely reasonable responses which get across the same message of “Kris is freaking out”. The main other thing Player Theorists often claim concerning Spamton is that the narration at the end of his Weird Route battle, that the switch between referring to Kris in third or second person is in fact a switch between referring to Kris and referring to us. This, simply put, is flagrant special pleading. Narration is consistently inconsistent about referring to Kris in second and third person, with no clear rhyme or reason in choosing between the two(why does Kris use items, but “You” eat the moss? Why does Kris use the KeyGen, but “You” use Jevil’s Door Key and hit the NEO body in an increasingly frantic attempt at percussive troubleshooting?) and in every single other instance of the narrator using second-person unambiguously refers to Kris. “Talked about snow matted on your brother’s nose”, “Your rank was upgraded to bed inspector”, “You drank the hot chocolate … Your throat tightened”, there’s no case to be made that any of these refer to anyone other than Kris: Asriel is Kris’ brother, not ours, “Bed inspector” is Kris’ rank, we don’t have one of those, Kris’ throat is tightening for emotional reasons, not ours. There is no basis to make an exception to the general rule of “second and third person are used interchangeably and both refer to Kris” for the weird route Spamton fight.

Which brings us to the narration where we’d most expect grammatical person to matter, because it was immensely important in Undertale: The mirror flavour text! In Undertale, the mirrors are of course used as one of the most explicit manners in which the Frisk/Chara connection is shown. We’d expect something similarly clever to be done with Deltarune to indicate the Kris/Player connection, but instead we get “It’s only you” and “It’s what they call you”. The former feels like a particularly strong contrast to Undertale, where it’s rather importantly not “only” Frisk, but this only matters if we’re choosing to insist on treating the narrator’s choice of grammatical person to refer to Kris as important despite there being no rhyme or reason behind it, as in their proper context these lines clearly aren’t doing anything like what Undertale uses mirrors for, instead these lines point towards Kris being dysphoric and miserable in their own body. At the end of the day, all the Spamton-related “evidence” for Player Theory is just cherry picking… And I can do that too! It’s right there in the title of this essay! “There is no audience”, literally means “there is no one watching from beyond the fourth wall”, which is another sharp contrast to Undertale, where Flowey directly acknowledges the player as a canonical entity with his “I bet someone like that is watching right now” line. If we are taking these other cherry-picked Spamton-related lines as being Meta Stuff™, then this same standard can be applied to “There is no audience”, which, if it is indeed Meta Stuff™, is explicit deconfirmation of Player Theory, because the player of a video game is an audience, is someone watching from beyond the fourth wall. If there’s no diegetic audience, there’s no diegetic player. To be clear: this random line is not concrete evidence that I am seriously presenting(As you may have guessed, it’s only in the title because it sounds dramatic while also getting across the thesis), I do not actually believe it is Meta Stuff™ anymore than I believe any of these other Spamton moments are Meta Stuff™. It is merely me countering fallacious logic by applying it consistently, using an equally nonsensical argument to demonstrate how ridiculous the original argument is. Supposed evidence for player theory relating to Spamton consists entirely of one-off lines taken drastically out of context and brief exchanges misrepresented in an effort to create cheap “gotchas”. While Player Theorists frequently make use of gish gallop when challenged, nowhere is it more transparent than where Spamton is concerned.

Easily among the most infuriatingly nonsensical claims I have ever seen from Player Theorists are ones thrown around about a certain little red heart. There is no ambiguity or room for debate here whatsoever: The SOUL belongs to Kris, and Kris alone. End of story. Ralsei explicitly describes it as belonging to Kris(and as being the “culmination of [Kris’] being), Spamton equates Kris to a “[Heart] ON A [Chain]”(in which Kris is the heart. Under Player Theory, we’d be on the opposite side of the chain. This line also notably does not come up in the Weird route, where under Player Theory you’d expect him to double down on calling Kris a puppet.). Kris’ body is described as containing “a human SOUL”, singular. If the SOUL is ours and/or literally us, then Kris is naturally soulless, which would be patently absurd for self-explanatory reasons. “But Missing!”, I hear some hypothetical person hypothetically reading this cry, “in chapter 1, you can control the SOUL in the cutscene when Kris removes it!”. To that, hypothetical person who I have invented for the sake of segueing to the next point, I say: The only odd thing about that is being able to control Kris during a cutscene. To say this proves the existence of a diegetic player is a complete non-sequitur, controlling our player character’s SOUL is nothing out of the ordinary for UTDR, and it’s not even consistent: We can’t move the SOUL during the fountain sealing cutscenes, or in the brief moment between “Kris” putting the SOUL in the sink cabinet and slamming the door shut on it. Regardless, the main point I wished to address in this section is quite simple: the SOUL removal cutscenes are NOT, I cannot emphasize this enough, NOT Kris breaking free of player control and acting of their own free will despite having removed the source of their will. Even when taking Player Theory as absolute fact, there is absolutely no reason to believe that the SOUL removal cutscenes are Kris freeing themself, as every other cutscene in the game demonstrates that Kris has absolutely no problems with acting on their own without removing their SOUL. Moreover, the SOUL removal began prior to the events of the game and is very clearly framed as a negative for them, and “Kris” behaves in an odd and decidedly out-of-character manner during these scenes. The wagon cage is described by narration as “having seen many crashes” and has a suspiciously blood-like stain on the floor next to it(and if it is blood, it literally cannot belong to anyone other than Kris, the only person in town who has blood to begin with). Toriel, as one would expect given her and Asgore’s track record with parenting children with severe mental health issues, is completely used to and doesn’t question Kris spending long periods of time locked in the bathroom with the water running to muffle any sound, brushing it off as just one of their many idiosyncrasies. Based on Kris’ expression while doing it and the damage sound effect, the act of forcibly removing one’s SOUL is highly painful. The self-harm analogy would be incredibly on-the-nose even if it was the only indication of Kris having some serious mental health stuff going on, which it is not, and it’s pretty clearly something that’s been going on for a long time. Regardless of if Player Theory is true or not, I could not ever in good faith subscribe to a reading that frames such a blatant analogy for self-harm as a positive thing for Kris.

And again, their behavior without the SOUL is out-of-character. Simply put, with their SOUL in, Kris repeatedly expresses concern over the threat posed by dark worlds, both the bigger-picture apocalyptic threat, and the smaller-picture threat they present to individuals who fall in as Noelle and Berdly did. On no less than three separate occasions they attempt to warn adults they perceive as having positions of power they can use to help deal with this threat, twice with no player input aside from talking to the correct NPCs: First, they inform the imprisoned kings, who if freed could potentially help fight the King of Spades, that the world is in danger, only for the King of Diamonds, being apathetic to anything besides his treasure, to brush off their concerns with an indifferent “Well, that’s a shame, isn’t it.”. Second, they attempt to speak with the Mayor, only to be told in either chapter that she’s busy. Third, the only case where a dialogue choice is required, they attempt to tell Undyne, who like the mayor cannot directly deal with the dark world but is can be put on lookout to potentially catch the Knight in the act or identify and secure locations where they’ve created dark worlds to protect innocent civilians from falling in. The dialogue choice is irrelevant, however, because as we’ve been over those are in-character for Kris anyways, and they go way above and beyond simply informing her of the dark worlds, explaining to her that more are appearing and citing their specific concern of people falling inside. However, “Kris” opens a fountain, directly next to Toriel. It does not make sense for Kris to express concern for the safety of strangers and then immediately expose their own mother to that same danger, something that “Kris” has been plotting to do since at least chapter 1 given how they performed setup for the chapter 3 dark world between chapters 1 and 2. “Kris” additionally leaves the door ajar, making it easier for others to enter(the most likely possibilities being, of course, the police and Asgore) and thus potentially exposing an unknown number of people to, once again, a danger Kris has clearly expressed they do not want strangers exposed to. This out-of-character behavior has a pretty simple explanation, and you have probably picked up on what I'm getting at if you've noticed how I keep saying “Kris” in quotation marks, but only part of the time.

This will be the only time I break from neutrality and present a theory I subscribe to as an alternative or counterpoint to any aspect or variation of Player Theory, and even then I have a reason beyond my own beliefs to discuss it. It is time to discuss what Player Theorists refer to derogatorily as “Third Entity theory”, a name which I would object to on principle even if I was not skeptical of Player Theory, as it presupposes the very unconfirmed existence of a diegetic player(which would of course be the second entity implied to exist by that name) and this is completely inappropriate for the name of a theory. It is bad form to name a theory in such a way that it assumes that an entirely separate theory is true, or to use a separate theory to either prove or disprove a theory, doing so only serves to create confusion as to what is and isn’t confirmed or canon and lend credibility to the offending theory that it has done nothing to earn, and in some cases creates the false impression that the second theory is actually dependent on the first being true(so that if the first is proven wrong, the second may be incorrectly assumed to fail because the first did). The name Third Entity Theory is deliberately manipulative framing that serves to lend unearned credence to Player Theory as well as stroke the confirmation bias of Player Theorists, hence why I have chosen to make the case for it here, in order to call attention to this manipulative framing. The more accurate name for this theory is “Kris Possession” Theory, though the title “Counter-Kris” has also been used for it, a shorter and catchier name that while less informative avoids confusion between it and Player Theory. Personally I do not assign any one name to it, as I simply view it as the most likely variation of Knight!Kris(since of course the Knight is the simplest candidate for the identity of “Kris”) and its more general counterpart Antagonist!Kris(Which at this point is confirmed. Aside from the lack of any benign explanation for what “Kris” does that doesn’t fall apart under the slightest serious scrutiny, in an interview Toby equated Kris with Oersted from Live A Live specifically on the grounds of them playing a role beyond that of a hero.), but for the sake of convenience, consistency, and clarity, this essay will refer to the theory as “Counter-Kris” and the being itself as “Kris”. The basics of Counter-Kris Theory are as follows: “Kris” behaves in a manner that is highly contradictory to what we know of Kris, and carries themself in a very different manner that is clearly meant to invoke horror tropes. “Kris” removes and physically traps Kris’ SOUL, the culmination of Kris’ being and source of their will(a new addition to the description of SOULs in UTDR), as well as their Determination. We know from Queen that Determination is needed to open a dark fountain, and that dark fountains(with the possible exception of Castle Town’s Grand Fountain, an exception to many of the usual rules concerning dark fountains, presumably due to its status of being made of “pure darkness”) possess a “will” which can be inferred to be derived from the will of its creator. Despite that last point, “Kris” retains the ability to create Dark Fountains. Now, Player Theorists often dismiss Counter-Kris Theory on the grounds that it muddies and overcomplicates the narrative with too many plotlines. This is actually something I wholeheartedly agree with, even if not the part where they use it as the sole grounds to discard the theory they like less. These two theories both being true would indeed be overcomplicating things and would be immensely hard to write well. They could coexist, but they probably do not.

So let’s hold Counter-Kris to the same standards we are already using and ask ourselves the same questions we did earlier about Player Theory, shall we? First: Does the timeline of events work out? Yes, it does. Where the player’s control inherently cannot predate the start of the game, “Kris” is under no such restrictions. Therefore, Counter-Kris explains the fact that the SOUL removal incidents predate the start of the game where Player Theory cannot. Next, are there moments where Kris acts separately from “Kris”? Yes, plenty, Counter-Kris only asserts that “Kris” is active in very specific moments, compared to Player Theory which asserts that we have control most of the time. With that in mind, if “Kris” is indeed distinct from Kris then there must be rules to this. Can we identify any of those rules? Absolutely we can. “Kris” only comes out in specific circumstances, and the way they do it has been consistent across all three instances. First of all, we have only seen “Kris” come out after sunset. That this is a rule is further supported by Seam’s ominous warning to Kris should you speak to them without having obtained any shadow crystals: “You don’t want to get caught when the sun goes down…”. Seam, of course, is known to have meta knowledge, foreknowledge of future events, and a PHD in Kris Dreemurr Weirdness, and this line is pretty clearly related to all of the above, with their equivalent lines if you’ve obtained Jevil and Spamton’s crystals discussing the chapter 3 secret boss, which means Seam already knows who that will be and thus what the next dark world will be despite it not having been created yet, which means they are also aware of the SOUL removal shenanigans. While Seam could hypothetically be giving more mundane advice unrelated to the SOUL removal shenanigans, as “go home before the sun sets” is good advice to give a kid in general, the ominous nature of the warning and the fact that it is a meta-aware character with knowledge of what’s to come like Seam who says this makes it unlikely to be something mundane. It makes more sense that every variation of their dialogue would hint in some way at their foreknowledge. Second, “Kris” taking control is always heralded by Kris’ body violently shuddering or thrashing, followed by a complete change to their body language. Only then does the SOUL removal occur. Similarly, in the one instance we see of “Kris” relinquishing the reins, they return Kris’ SOUL to their body, shudder briefly again, and only then does Kris stand up normally as if nothing happened. There are clear indicators as to whether Kris or “Kris” is in control, and clear visual indicators when the control changes. Neither of which we get with Player Theory, it's purely a matter of “Did I input something that requires this of Kris”, and even then many Player Theorists will try to have their cake and eat it too by claiming something Kris did unrelated to player input was us or vice-versa.

Finally: Does Counter-Kris explain anything that Player Theory fails to explain or vice-versa? Yes. As stated before, it explains why the SOUL removal incidents started before the start of the game, which Player Theory cannot explain since before the start of the game there'd be nothing for Kris to free themself from. It also explains why the SOUL removal is framed as actively harmful to Kris, and why “Kris” leans so heavily into horror tropes: shambling about like a zombie(or more thematically relevant, like a puppet) with their head bowed and hair covering their face except when we catch glimpses of a gaping mouth in a pained expression or a full-blown slasher smile, the music completely cutting out to emphasize the often-echo-y sound effects when “Kris” is around and returning when they’re not. Player Theory cannot explain these, one would expect under its reading that these scenes would be framed as a good thing, and for the puppet-esque movement and associated body language to be present literally anywhere but moments where Kris frees themself. It really cannot be stressed enough how thematically dissonant it is to have a character being puppeteered who only adopts puppet-y mannerisms upon forcibly breaking free of their strings. This can’t be brushed off as a result of strain from the SOUL removal itself, because despite the shambling, “Kris” consistently shows that they are not physically weakened in any way, they clearly show that their strength and agility is not actually affected through slamming the SOUL into the cage(and cabinet in chapter 2) with immense force and their nimble jump back into the bathroom, and in both chapters they display this body language prior to removing the SOUL. The latter is more apparent in chapter 1, but even in chapter 2 “Kris” abruptly drops to their knees and into that bowed head position typical of “Kris” before removing the SOUL. Further, Counter-Kris explains how one could open a dark fountain despite having removed the source of their Determination and will: it’s someone else’s Determination and will. It explains why Seam gives that ominous warning and means that Seam is demonstrating their foreknowledge regardless of if you’re engaging with the secret boss sidequest or not, which fits their character. This also explains why the SOUL removals exclusively happen after sunset. It explains the SOUL removal at all: Ultimately, Player Theory simply does not explain the SOUL removal. There is no reason why Kris would need to remove their SOUL to break free of player control when at no other point do they ever show an inability to act without player input. As for the inverse… While Player Theory claims to solve the issue of Kris’ SOUL being moveable during cutscenes, it’s a needlessly convoluted solution to a problem Counter-Kris simply explains far more(the SOUL, the culmination of Kris’ being and source of their will, is more Kris than their body right now. We play as Kris, not “Kris”) and fits far better than Player Theory, “Kris” slots far more cleanly into the game’s narrative than the player and the presence of both would clutter the narrative with overcomplicated plotlines that would be immensely difficult to handle in a compelling manner. The main point here is that the interpretation of the SOUL removal scenes as Kris breaking free from our control does not make sense and that Player Theory cannot explain these moments.

The Weird Route is frequently presented as the ultimate proof of Player Theory, with Kris as an innocent victim of the Player's control. Even some skeptics of Player Theory will inexplicably fold completely and unconditionally accept this reading of the route. However, this reading does not hold up to scrutiny, and ultimately erases nuance from Kris’ character, echoing the worst of the infamous debates about Chara's morality. So let’s discuss the themes and framing of the weird route, shall we? First: the entire route is framed as something that’s not meant to exist, as breaking the game as a fundamental level. The story, to someone who is unaware that it’s real, reads as a sh*tty video game creepypasta like Buried Alive, to a degree much greater than Undertale’s geno route ever did, there is a constant motif of computer errors, with Spamton, whose numerous inspirations include Trojan Horse viruses, taking over Queen’s mansion, freezing enemies being a very literal freezing of computer programs, and the Snowgrave spell being a clear nod to the Blue Screen of Death, caused by fatal errors. Despite being a lightner, Noelle takes on heavy darkner elements by representing inanimate objects through her freezing of programs. Snowgrave typically requires an impossible amount of TP. The in-file name of “weird route” itself emphasizes how this is not normal. Perhaps most importantly, and most horrifyingly, the game completely refuses to acknowledge anything out of the ordinary has happened. Once you hit the light world, everything that Noelle or Berdly's “fallen down” body are not directly present for remains completely unchanged(and this is not the last I have to say about this). Like a game that you have deliberately broken, recovering as best it can and carrying on as normal, unable to acknowledge the ways you've broken it because it lacks the code to do so, it can only do its best to railroad you back onto the intended path so it can continue like everything is normal. It's uniquely suited to the internet-based Cyber World and a major refinement of Undertale's attempts to capture these same elements of “bad video game creepypasta, but it's actually real” and “breaking the game in a way that shouldn't be possible” through its geno route, both rather underappreciated elements of Undertale's geno route metanarrative, and it's incredibly effective at making a first-time player genuinely disturbed in a way the geno route never quite accomplishes. And it is these parallels to Undertale that show us what's really going on in the narrative, but before delving into that, we must discuss what's not happening.

Let me be perfectly clear: Even under Player Theory, even if we accept the idea of a diegetic player directly causing Kris to do the things they are doing, Kris is still a fully willing accomplice in the weird route. We know they can act freely in cutscenes, we know they have freedom of speech, yet here more than anywhere else Kris’ consistent refusal to seek help with their supposed possession problem is a shining beacon of “obvious plot hole this theory presents”(You could say this issue is still shining in the cold.). We know they’re capable of acting freely in cutscenes, and control their own speech, they could resist in any number of ways and even if they may or may not be capable of rendering the route entirely impossible, they could sure as heck make it a much bigger pain in the butt to complete, which would create a much more interesting metanarrative conflict than the Player Theory reading of the weird route we actually have, of a playable character exploiting cutscenes and other game mechanics to make themself as much of a nuisance as possible and attempting to warn as many people as possible about what we’re trying to make them do. Heck, the player theory reading of the SOUL removal scenes as Kris breaking free are even more nonsensical in the context of the weird route, because if they can do that they why on Earth wouldn’t they do it to stop us from manipulating their friends? And it drags the idea of Kris willingly opening a fountain even further out of character, because now they know that THAT could hypothetically happen again next time they’re in a dark world, and it’d be all too easy to manipulate Toriel’s mama bear protectiveness or Undyne’s absolutist sense of justice or simply pressure Blooky into submission as happened with Noelle to get them to kill as readily as Noelle did. The stakes of opening a fountain are even higher for Kris under this reading and it was already out-of-character for them to willingly do that. Under this reading of the weird route, Kris should want to do everything in their power to minimize the amount of time they spend in dark worlds to try to prevent us from getting an opportunity to pull something like THAT again.(ironically, this is one place where muddying the Player Theory narrative with by combining it with Counter-Kris, player theorist’s beloathed “ThIrD eNtItIy”, would benefit them immensely, as it would explain why the fountain still gets opened without this issue.) Better than anywhere else, the weird route demonstrates the complete and total lack of any kind of internally consistent rules required for Player Theory to make any amount of sense with Kris’ established character. If the distinction between something we do and something Kris does is determined entirely by plot convenience, then that is quite simply bad writing.

And on top of Kris’ refusal to use any of the options at their disposal to resist the weird route, which already very firmly establishes them as being at minimum complicit through inaction, we consistently see that they are not emotionally affected by the route in the slightest. As previously mentioned, Kris’ demeanor is completely and totally unaltered compared to the regular route when neither Noelle or Berdly are around. This is what enables the light world segment to be unchanged outside of the computer lab and hospital scenes in the first place, not a single person ever comments on Kris seeming upset or distressed. The closest any character not personally involved in the weird route proper EVER comes to commenting on Kris’ behavior in any way that would show they’re upset, afraid, feeling guilty, in shock, traumatized, experiencing any negative emotion over what’s happening supposedly against their will at all, is Susie asking them if they’re okay immediately after meeting up with them, but Ralsei assumes she’s asking if they’re PHYSICALLY okay and she confirms this assumption and offers to heal Kris if they hurt themself. She’s expressing concern for their physical wellbeing and looking for an opportunity to show off her newly learned healing, not worried about how they’re feeling, so as far as that scene shows Kris is as stoic as usual. There’s no indication Kris feels bad at all about what’s happening. Nor do they express relief about the route being aborted like they do when deciding not to drop the ball of junk. And on top of all that… Kris actively goes above and beyond to contribute to the route in ways entirely outside of player input, ways that they can only be doing willingly. Consider the second mouse puzzle, where Noelle is gradually backed up against the electrical barrier until she freezes the puzzle. Except… This is a cutscene. We don’t control Kris’ movement during cutscenes. Kris is the one backing Noelle up, not us. It’s not like Toby is unwilling to allow us to move during cutscenes, because we can interrupt Noelle in the hospital by moving, and if the intent was for this to be us doing it, then the better way to communicate this(both for the cool effect and for ludonarrative harmony purposes) would be to do the same thing as the hospital scene: fade to black, have Noelle talk and have us interrupt her by actually doing the input required to back her up between “proceeds”.

Then there’s the matter of a certain voice. This voice is frequently presented by Player Theorists as belonging to us… but that doesn’t make a shred of sense. It takes two seconds to disprove this notion: Deltarune lacks the ability to detect microphone audio and most players don’t say the options they’re picking out loud anyways, let alone in a voice that meets the description of “terrifying”. Player Theory requires that we are only able to speak through input provided to Kris, who unambiguously controls the actual delivery. Again, this being us requires breaking the ludonarrative harmony by assigning actions to us that we rationally know we did not do. The voice is incredibly weak evidence in general, as it is only attested to by Noelle, whose lucidity during the weird route proper is dubious at best. She’s dissociating(Disclaimer: I do not know much about dissociation and that may not even be the correct term for what’s happening with her. The point here is that she’s blacking out and forgetting things that literally just happened.) as early as obtaining the FreezeRing. She describes the battles as “blurring together”. The Thorn Ring grants the “Trance” effect, which, we don’t know the specifics of what that does to her but we sure as heck can infer the gist of it from the name. She initially entirely fails to recognize Berdly, one of her closest friends. She freaks out over hearing Kris talk while downed, even though this makes complete sense, they aren’t dead or unconscious, they’ve just been knocked on their butt, there’s no reason they wouldn’t be able to talk(and regardless, if they can’t speak, then we necessarily cannot speak through them. Both according to the general rule and the fact that Noelle explicitly describes the voice as coming from them here.). Noelle is not a reliable narrator whose account of the Weird Route can be taken at face value, far from it. Her account is poor evidence because with her fragmented memory and poor lucidity we cannot be sure what is and isn’t real, what she may be misremembering or imagining. It would be incredibly easy for her to misremember the voice as sounding unlike Kris simply because it’s so far from what she expects of Kris that she exaggerated the differences in her head in retrospect. Even if we disregard this and pretend that she’s a reliable source, her account of the voice ultimately goes against the idea of Kris as a helpless victim anyways. If Kris’ voice sounds different from how they usually do, that’s on them, not us. We can’t touch the tone they use. But Noelle doesn’t describe their voice as scared or upset or even resigned, she describes it as terrifying. If what Noelle says is true, if her memories are accurate, then Kris is intentionally, willingly adopting an uncharacteristically menacing tone that matches the actions we are supposedly forcing them to do. They’re completely on board with what’s happening. The only thing Noelle says that CAN be taken at face value is her statement that Kris has been acting strangely recently. This sounds on the surface like it would support Player Theory, but as I mentioned quite some time ago, this extends further back than the start of the game and thus predates the player: Noelle clarifies that part of what she means is that Kris keeps coming to the hospital. She will say this even if you did not visit the hospital in chapter 1, meaning Kris must have started visiting the hospital regularly prior to the start of the game, otherwise she’d question why they came to the hospital today rather than why they keep visiting. Yet again, we by definition cannot be responsible for anything Kris did prior to the start of the game.

So, with it rather firmly established that no, the actual events of the weird route do not support the reading of Kris as an innocent victim being traumatized by us right alongside Noelle, what IS happening? To answer that, we must discuss the weird route’s parallels to Undertale's geno route. I’ve already mentioned some of the thematic parallels, but the parallels between characters and the implications thereof are what’s really interesting here. So first, weird!Noelle is an exceedingly obvious parallel to geno!Chara. Noelle is associated with angels on numerous occasions(with Kris as a demon-associated counterpart), while Chara is associated with both angels and demons, taking the role of “the angel who has seen the surface” in the geno route by causing the Underground to go empty through their erasure of the world, while simultaneously calling themself a demon(its self-given title of “demon that comes when people call its name”, their equivalent to Asriel’s “absolute god of hyperdeath”). Both are morally corrupted through the guidance of their respective human companions, and use the exact same rationalization of getting stronger, compare Noelle's soliloquy in the third mouse puzzle room to Chara's monologue about the purpose of its reincarnation being power and becoming strong. And of course, Chara is “the demon that comes when people call its name”, and which of Kris’ friends actually came when they called their name? The parallels between Kris and Frisk are a little more complicated, what with Frisk’s personality being communicated in a subtle manner that requires careful analysis to follow(even without a vocal subset of the fandom actively and maliciously spreading misinformation about them, denying that they’re anything more than a blank slate in order to justify erasure of an non-binary character. But again, bigotry in the fandom is not the topic of this essay.) But Kris and Frisk are parallels in general, Kris is in many ways a composite of traits taken from Frisk and Chara and even Kris and Frisk’s personalities have a lot of overlap when you look closely(though this is not the time or place to go into Frisk character analysis). There’s one main parallel between geno!Frisk and weird!Kris specifically, though, and that’s what the route itself represents for their characters. Both bad routes serve as “what if” scenarios showcasing what their respective protagonist is capable of at their absolute worst. It’s Frisk’s unyielding determination, turned towards murder as curiosity drives them to give into their worst intrusive thoughts in the exact same way as Flowey did. It’s Kris’ relationship with Noelle twisted into something deeply toxic and eerily romance-coded, their pranks, which even under normal circumstances frequently toe the line of meanness or even potentially dangerous, taken to a fatal scale. That last bit is particularly relevant because Noelle explicitly brushes the route off as a prank they got carried away with in several aborts, clearly associating the route with Kris’ pranksterism. An often ignored part of the horror of both routes is that they’re ultimately entirely in-character for their respective perpetrators, nothing has changed about them, it simply represents them choosing to be the worst they can possibly be.

Ultimately, the central problem with the Player Theory reading of the weird route as us forcing Kris to do these things is that it absolves them of guilt for actions they took while giving no signs of resistance or remorse by shifting the blame to a different character. This is a parallel to the geno route that is based entirely in the fandom’s reactions to the bad routes, one which I am particularly unappreciative of, because the fandom’s scapegoating of Chara has done irreparable damage to understanding of their character, spawning deeply toxic debates that have lasted to this day and entire subreddits solely dedicated to erasing any nuance from a heavily nuanced character and to flanderizing it in opposite directions. In both cases we have a protagonist having the blame shifted off of them to scapegoat a character supposedly controlling their body, portraying the protagonist as an innocent victim helpless to resist and woobifying them in spite of the fact that neither ever showed any sign of resistance, guilt, regret, or trauma. The only difference is that Chara makes for a much more problematic scapegoat since they’re an in-universe character and thus being scapegoated harms them in a way it can never harm us, but the erasure of nuance from the protagonist is the same. And to be blunt: If you genuinely, unironically believe that acknowledging that a protagonist is at fault for their actions absolves the player of guilt, then you need to get over yourself and remember that this is a video game we’re talking about and not real life. The level of meta a game reaches doesn’t change the fact that we are responsible for hitting the keys on the keyboard that got to that result or the protagonist’s role in that. Kris did not resist, despite being entirely capable of it. Kris did not show signs of guilt or regret. Kris is not traumatized and does not react as if anything out of the ordinary is happening at all. They go out of their way to contribute above and beyond our input. Kris is at fault for the weird route, end of story. This much is entirely irrelevant to whether or not you still believe in player theory after reading this essay, if you believe that Kris is an innocent victim then you are repeating one of the most damaging aspects of the UTDR fandom’s history. I am going to cut myself off here and move on to the next point because I’ve gotten more heated than I intended but I stand by these words enough that I’m not going to tone down the intensity.

One may assume that Gaster is a topic where there'd be a lot of convoluted stuff to discuss, that we're about to delve deep into the realm of Gaster Brainrot™. One would be wrong. The sheer lack of concrete knowlege of Gaster's everything actually makes things relatively simple, there are only two things we need to talk about.

First, the Twitter takeovers, wherein Gaster apparently communicates directly with us. Those… aren't canon. This should be self-explanatory, as it's well known that Toby's tweets aren't canon, he has been quite clear about this fact. And no, the Twitter takeovers are not an exception to this rule, Toby did the same thing for Undertale with Flowey. For Gaster's takeover to be canon, Flowey's must be too for the sake of consistency, and while Flowey certainly has more meta-awareness than most of Undertale's cast, his takeover being canon would put him on Gaster-pilled levels of meta-awareness, being fully aware of the Undertale demo and the full game. While a useful reference for identifying his speech patterns, the takeovers tell us nothing about the story.

Second, the Goner Maker. This seems like inarguable proof of the existence of a diegetic player, right? It's so very clearly Gaster speaking directly to the Player, with the fact that it's in-game making it unambiguously canon, right? …Not really. We have far too little context to draw any concrete conclusions about the Goner Maker beyond “There's absolutely no way that isn't Gaster”. Let me ask you, is there actually any evidence that Gaster and the second speaker are speaking to the player? Not really. There’s a red SOUL, but that can’t be ours because we don’t have SOULs(not to be confused with souls, the concept upon which SOULs are based, which we may or may not have, I would not touch the topic of the existence or nonexistence of souls with a five-meter pole. Regardless of if souls exist or not, we do not have SOULs as they are portrayed in UTDR.), and it can’t be Kris’ because that’s in their body and, even under a Player theory reading, Gaster never had any intention of using Kris as a vessel. The SOUL either belongs to some other character that Gaster is speaking to, or is an abstraction of some kind and not a real SOUL. The latter strikes me as more likely, as it doesn’t require Gaster to be speaking to a human with a red SOUL, but who knows. We’re asked to put in our names, but that doesn’t mean a whole lot, Toby is no stranger to messing with expectations when it comes to inputting names, having done it first in Undertale where it turns out you were naming an entirely different character than the one you assumed you named, and then again literally two seconds before this when Gaster had us name the vessel, that most first-time players will input their own names and thus set up the rugpull is very intentional in both cases and that’s also the reason there’s special dialogue for using the same name you gave the vessel. There’s one other thing that doesn’t make sense: Gaster is clearly familiar with the person he’s talking to, yet we haven’t ever met him before, the familiarity does not make sense. Which brings us back to the topic of the twitter takeovers. Gaster expresses even more familiarity with the person he’s talking to there, even though, again, we haven’t met him yet. And so is Flowey in his own twitter takeover, for reasons that are obvious if you look at what he’s actually saying: it’s abundantly clear from context that the takeover is Flowey talking to what he believes to be Chara. This is something Flowey does elsewhere, on numerous occasions he appears on an otherwise black screen to speak in the general direction of the fourth wall in such a way that it’s obvious that even though Flowey, the character, is speaking to another character either directly(as in his post-neutral speeches where he’s talking to Frisk) or in spirit(as in his post-pacifist speech where he’s talking to Chara), Toby, the guy who actually wrote the dialogue, is speaking to us. Gaster doing the same thing suddenly explains his familiarity: sure, from an out-of-universe perspective this is us setting some stuff up, but from Gaster’s in-universe perspective he’s talking to someone else, someone he’s actually familiar with. Ultimately, we know far too little about Gaster and his shenanigans to draw any concrete conclusions, any attempt to do so is ultimately conjecture at best, but there are clear issues with the Player Theorist interpretation of Gaster’s shenanigans.

Before we conclude, let us have a quick lightning-round to address any small point that I was unable to address in a larger point. No, the narrator’s occasional references to Undertale do not indicate the presence of the player. These are standard meta references from what appears to be, in contrast to Undertale, a standard omniscient narrator. No, the dialogue option to express familiarity with Sans is not the player greeting Sans as if he’s UT!Sans, rather it’s Kris playing along with the joke. Sans expressed faux familiarity first with his greeting to Kris, and the dialogue options are Kris choosing whether or not humour his joke, at which point Sans will drop it either for the comedic effect of dropping the bit when one would expect him to commit to it a little longer or because the joke isn’t landing. No, the scenes following Susie aren't Ralsei distracting us to talk to Kris alone or anything ridiculous like that, quite the contrary, we know with absolute certainty that Kris is watching these scenes and not talking to Ralsei, not only is their SOUL still present in the dialogue options, not only do they explictly say the dialogue options out loud such that Susie can respond to it in chapter 1, but the options themselves are clearly in character for Kris. This is very apparent in chapter 2, where it's abundantly clear that Kris is making a genuine effort to play wingperson even though Susie can't hear them and is immune to romance, blatantly oblivious to the fact that anyone is interested in her in that way. Kris is watching these scenes, and is invested in them(except in the weird route, where the option to watch is entirely absent and they will simply stand in silence waiting for Susie to get back so they can continue.), the only question here is how Ralsei is able to do this, and even then I don't think that's a particularly important question. And no, we cannot ever hear the character’s thoughts. This particular misconception mainly comes from the weird route, when Kris responds to Noelle talking about getting intrusive thoughts about killing Kris with “It’s horrible/natural”(contrary to popular belief, the former option does not abort the route), but it’s well-established that parentheses in dialogue typically(with some exceptions like Queen(Because She Is: A Computer(Smart)) represents whispered, mumbled, or otherwise low-volume dialogue, not thoughts. Not only is Noelle herself unsure if she said that out loud, but in the regular route she confirms she mumbles dialogue in parentheses with the “Unknown” dialogue option, which ends with “Are they waiting for me to stop mumbling?”, establishing precedent that shows she did in fact say that stuff out loud. I could address many more of these small miscellaneous points, but I simply don’t have time to justify doing too many individually in this essay, these are just some common things that I would have liked to fit into a larger section but couldn’t without breaking my flow.

The final point worth discussing is the overarching theme of Deltarune as a whole. “Your choices don't matter”, a direct subversion of Undertale's emphasis on player choice. Some people have compared this theme to Flowey's “Kill or be killed” philosophy and claimed it will be similarly subverted, but there are numerous key differences: First, “kill or be killed” is purely tied to Flowey and is the words of a traumatized child expressing how he blames himself for his own death as well as a demonstration of his moral decline. While the phrasing of “Your choices don't matter” comes from Susie, she's not the first to voice this sentiment, that honour goes to the second speaker in the Goner Maker, the one who discards the vessel, who states that “no one can choose who they are in this world”. So in terms of in-universe characters vocalizing these messages, we have a traumatized kid versus a mysterious entity with the knowlege and power to interfere with Gaster Shenanigans™, who is actively in the process of backing up their assertion with a demonstration. Furthermore, whereas “kill or be killed” starts getting undermined from the second Flowey gets fireballed by Toriel, is never actually taken seriously as a theme, and is contradicted by Undertale's advertised premise, such that nobody could reasonably play Undertale's demo and come away with the impression that there would be a theme of “kill or be killed”, “your choices don't matter” has been rather consistently reinforced. Starting the game by having you make a character only to have it ripped away in favour of a certain potassium-flavoured teenager, having dialogue choices canceled before we can choose, illusion of choice in the form options that have the same outcome, constant railroading... No choices are big enough to stop the game from dragging you unceremoniously back onto the main path, with chapter 2 dragging the two endings of the King fight back into one unified path with nothing more than throwaway dialogue to acknowledge that you did anything differently at all, and the creation of the chapter 3 fountain being an even more unceremonious manner of rerailing the overarching plot as part of the weird route’s game-breaking symbolism. Toby has been consistent in saying that Deltarune will only have one ending, the one birthed from his 2011 fever dream. We cannot change the big picture, the overall ending will remain unchanged, even by symbolically breaking the game with the weird route we can only change things that are superficial in the grand scheme of things, we can only affect the smaller picture. Even if we go so far as to break off one of the beads, the rest still march grimly along their set paths. Our choices don't matter. With this in mind, the idea of a diegetic player with this level of diegetic control goes against this theme of choices not mattering, creating dissonance between the regular narrative and metanarrative. Player Theory is a level of diegetic control that we don't see with Undertale, the game all about player choice, where the player is explicitly diegetic, being outright referenced by Flowey, yet Flowey describes us in the same breath as passive observers, we exist in Undertale but don't diegetically control Frisk. This is a complete inversion of the themes of both games, further highlighting that dissonance between the meta and the regular narratives. Player Theory clashes heavily with Deltarune’s own themes, especially when compared to how an actual diegetic player was handled by Undertale, the game those themes are subverting.

I wish to make it abundantly clear: I don’t have anything against Player Theory as a concept. I think it’s a potentially fun concept for fanworks, provided the writer is competent enough to not reduce it to edgy garbage, but the evidence for it as of the events of chapters 1 and 2 are flimsy at best, being built off a stream of non-sequiturs, leaps in logic, and cherry-picked quotes that don’t actually say what is being asserted of them. It is frequently weaponized to shift the blame for the protagonist’s bad actions off them in a manner unpleasantly reminiscent of the sort of Chara scapegoating that has spawned one of the most toxic aspects of the UTDR fandom. At its worst, it could completely tear apart any sense of immersion through ludonarrative dissonance and undermine Deltarune’s established themes and meta interactions with its predecessor and sister game. In spite of that, I will gladly eat crow if it turns out to be the route Toby is taking, because even though the current evidence does not support that being his intent, I have complete trust in his skills as a writer to salvage what, if Player theory was intended, is a very weak start, and handle the incredibly delicate balance of ludonarrative harmony and the metanarrative in a tasteful manner. The purpose of this essay has never been to say “this can’t be happening”, but “here’s why I don’t believe this is what’s happening”, and I sincerely hope that even if you come out of this still disagreeing you have also come out with a better understanding of Player Theory’s flaws and go into chapters 3 and 4 with a mind open to other interpretations. If you’re still reading this, thank you for hearing me out on this project that was never supposed to cut it anywhere near as close to the release of chapters 3 and 4 as it has, I hope to see you days before the release of chapter 5 for the follow-up to this essay where I explain any evidence chapters 3 and 4 have added or recontextualized and give my updated stance on Player Theory(Oh god please no I can’t cut it this close again) and finally: “DELTARUNE TOMMOROW” tomorrow!

#deltarune #deltarune theory #deltarune player theory #deltarune player #kris dreemurr #deltarune essay #deltarune theory debunking #deltarune demo #deltarune chapters 1 and 2

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